EPSRC has two roles with respect to the World Wide Web: we are users, both as a publicity vehicle for our own programmes and as an information source; we are also a potential source of research funding for academics with an interest in the Web.
Our biggest problem with respect to the web is probably what should we be funding. Many issues were raised during the course of this meeting, and we have been approached from time to time with proposals for work on web-related problems.
My first question to the audience at the workshop was thus, are the issues involved in interface design and other problems relating to web use being met by researchers in academe? Form the tenor of the talks and the discussion, the answer would seem to be 'no'.
The next question therefore is:'Why not?'. Does the community, as represented by the 'peer review' process, not give the topic a high enough priority, or is it being ignored by the community?
From my perspective as the recipient of applications it seems that researchers are not applying themselves to the problem. Such web-based projects that we do receive (and there are not that many) tend to be simplistic, tackling short term problems that are likely to be solved by commercial companies long before any grant we might award can make an impact. These kind of proposals are not rated highly and are not funded. Successful projects tend to be those that are taking web-based technology and applying it to other domains.
This leads me to the next problem. Given the growing commercial interest in the web, is there any point in doing research in an academic environment? Won't Microsoft do it anyway?
For the short term problems, maybe, yes. But for the major issues, perhaps not. To my mind, researchers in this domain (and HCI in general) need to step back and address more fundamental issues. There is a need to understand the issues and to provide a theoretical base for the subject that can be drawn on by companies involved in implementing systems - be they web based, or otherwise. This is of course something that the Joint Council Initiative in Cognitive Science and HCI attempted to do - to provide a basic science for the subject by linking sociology and psychology. We need to build on this and to continue the process.